Flashbulb Memory

A flashbulb memory is a highly detailed, exceptionally vivid 'snapshot' of the moment and circumstances in which a piece of surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) news was heard. Flashbulb memory is an appropriate name for the phenomenon in that it suggests surprise, an indiscriminate illumination, and brevity. The name is inappropriate as an actual photograph is indiscriminate and preserves everything within its scope. Flashbulb memories, in actuality, are only somewhat indiscriminate and are far from complete. Evidence has shown that although people are highly confident in their memories, the details of the memories can be forgotten.

Flashbulb memories are one type of autobiographical memory. Some researchers believe that there is reason to distinguish flashbulb memories from other types of autobiographical memory because they rely on elements of personal importance, consequentiality, emotion, and surprise. Others believe that ordinary memories can also be accurate and long lasting if they are highly distinctive, personally significant, or repeatedly rehearsed.

Flashbulb memories have six characteristic features: place, ongoing activity, informant, own affect, other affect, and aftermath. Arguably, the principal determinants of a flashbulb memory are a high level of surprise, a high level of consequentiality, and perhaps emotional arousal.

Other articles related to "flashbulb memory, memory":

Critique of Flashbulb Memory Research ... Flashbulb memory research tends to focus on public events that have a negative valence ... This is due to the nature of the variables needed for flashbulb memory research the experience of a surprising event is hard to manipulate ... has been done on gender differences and flashbulb memory, although it exists for general memory ...

Exceptional Memory - Emotional Memory ... An emotional or flashbulb memory refers to the memory of a personal significant event with distinctly vivid and long-lasting detailed information ... A Flashbulb memory is said to be less accurate and less permanent than photographic memories, but its forgetting curve is less affected by time in comparing to other types of memories ... One important aspect of flashbulb memory is that it involves emotional arousal when the event is being remembered ...

Famous quotes containing the word memory:

“Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now.”—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)